When I started this blog, my tree was a seed with 3 leaves sticking out of it. I had just moved back to my parents’ house for a few months, on the road to uncertain places. I remember that I rode my bike up large hills on 90 degree days and looked for caterpillars. Continue reading →

Happy birthday to this sweet little neglected blog! 4 years old and changing every day.

These are Dog Days indeed- one of the hottest I can remember in my 8 summers enjoying life without air conditioning. It’s usually not nearly as bad as people make it out to be- close the blinds, open the windows at night, use the ceiling fan when you’re in the room… I’m good. Sometimes it is an obstacle to cooking just when all yummiest the food is available, but I sweat it out every week or so and live to tell the tale. It is nice to smell the fresh air and hear the birds singing with the windows open and this time of year, the Cicadas! My old favorite insects are back and their chorus is what really makes summer official. Indeed, there is even a Cicada in Maryland named the Dog Day Cicada. It comes out annually, unlike its more famous red-eyed brethren.

Did you know that the Dog Days of summer occur when the constellation Sirius makes an appearance in our night sky? The Scandinavians are into celebrating anything related to non-frozen times of year and all the old Pagan traditions, so this is obviously their holiday, occurring between early July and mid-August. That is more or less when the Dog Day Cicada calls too. But here is another did you know: Did you know that there are actually 18 species of Cicadas that live here in Maryland? And that the periodic Cicadas are actually 3 different species? That is what the Maryland Biodiversity Project has listed on their website. There is not a lot of information- most of the species have no records, and the Dog Day Cicada has none! Is it a rare Cicada? I’m not even sure. Today I found a barely alive perfect looking Swamp Cicada hanging out in the driveway, so my guess is that this species is the common choruser.

Here is to the soil that remains unturned and the concrete that is not poured over it, so that these sweet friends can sing for many generations to come.

Despite the dire title, for months I have been meaning to write about my many successes out here in our natural world. Successes in finding and observing the bounty of spring early through late, in finding my way around a somewhat new neck of the woods, and in laying my human hands on what living things I might reach and, for better or worse, mess with. As always, I try and be thoughtful. I hope my manipulations will be for the better. Historically, these have mainly involved insects, and this year they still do. The Cecropia caterpillars I found last summer on a Blackhaw Viburnum have been emerging. I really wanted to write about the challenges and wonders this species has presented, but I will save it for another day. I have some eggs, I am lucky to say, and I am as sure as I can be that they are fertile and kicking.

When it comes to plants, my philosophy is a more hands-off approach. I want our yards to fill themselves with nature that comes naturally. Yet, this year I have a huge yard to myself for the first time. I have been growing some herbs and vegetables, just a few, carefully protected in chickenwire. It has gone well and I have gotten really into it, rapidly becoming somehow like my Grandmas and any stereotypical Grandma and I am quite certain this means my brain is aging and no longer seeks novelty but rather the rewards of simple labors. Ugh, so I am old now, and so much older than I was when this blog was a baby. At 29, I was a baby too. Now it must actually be around the blog-o-versary, but I am not quite prepared to investigate the specifics tonight.

I do have to think back to the origins of everycreepingthing though, and my little beloved baby Avocado. This baby is the source of the title of this current post, it has suffered a setback and it may not recover! Please keep my Chesapeake brewed in beer and youth babe in your thoughts. I have been meaning to put it outside, as someone did when it was in her care for a couple of rather sunless years, and let it grow some more. I also have been thinking I should probably repot. But I have reached an uncertain point with this youthful creature; I do not know anyone besides my Grandmother who kept one this long. She is gone now, so I cannot ask her, and when she was here my then novelty-seeking brain did not pay attention. She was here, of course, when the blog began, and that is one of the many dramatic turns that may or may not have contributed to my aging. Anyway, life changes, we all grow old, and I guess it’s true that until a certain point you don’t quite believe it will actually happen to you too. Whatever other setbacks, unfair twists of fate, or loss you may have experienced, time may indeed rob you of more. I don’t mean that to sound entirely dire. It also means that gratitude for what is is generally more valuable than bitterness for what isn’t. The most openly grateful people I know can also be a little bit… smug, perhaps. If you’re reading this I almost certainly do not mean you. But privately, I hope we can all appreciate what we have.

Because today, in addition to continuing a sort of obsessive planting of native species that I would normally advise against in favor of letting nature plant things for you (my frantic planting began as a result of a kind person mowing my lawn and leaving me feeling bereft at the loss of the butterflies who’d been enjoying the foot high daisies and clovers) including Black Eyed Susans and Coral Honeysuckle, a native that the Hummingbirds generally enjoy, I also decided to take on the Avocado work. I transplanted the big baby first, and some heart-wrenching root-ripping occurred. The plant was already really really droopy, like the trunk was just too weak. Do I prune? Was transplanting best? There was not really extensive rooting to the bottom, so I’m not certain this huge heavy new pot was necessary. I left it outside in the shade, since it has had a tough time with too much sun for too long when I have brought it out on other adventures. While I was at it, mixing sand, etc, I decided to transplant the baby’s 1.5 year old younger sibling (an old soul from the start, it never qualified for the B word in my heart). This went well, the root system looked ready for transplant without being rootbound, and that child was proud and tall in its new pot. I thought it would be generous of me to leave it in dappled shade, and then let it grow fast and tall in the sun for the summer. Alas, later I went out to check on the nearly sideways sensitive darling, and I saw that my younger one was knocked over, snipped in half, uneaten but killed, all for the pit that had still been supplying it. Good bye strong proud avocado that asked for little and received less. You deserved better, but I really thought I was helping! I am waiting to see if your root system can grow something.

I took the baby in, of course. I can’t bare more squirrels or worse in this strangely vulnerable urban yard to hurt my tree. Now the poor thing is tied up with a scarf to a shelf in my kitchen, to keep it from practically lying on the ground. The leaves actually look pretty happy, which I think they might not if the roots were really harmed. Channeling my Grandmother’s old Reader’s Digests I wonder, Can This Avocado Be Saved? It’s been through so much with me, I hope so.

I’m not ready for the big yellow taxi to take this babe away. Actual concrete advice welcomed.

I went on a plant walk along the Gunpowder with the Maryland Native Plant Society. I remember being amazed by the birders who could hear and ID Parulas, Yellow Throated Warblers, and Louisiana Waterthrushes in the distance on early spring trips to look for salamanders and flowers. Now I find that I am one of them. It is so much easier to learn the harder songs now that I find other songs so familiar. It also helps to know who to expect when, and where. These three warblers show up early, although quickly more are coming. I actually saw a pair of Louisiana Waterthrushes near what may be a nest. They make nests in mud banks, they are warblers despite their name, their legs are pink and their chip call is loud. But plants are easier to take pictures of.

Is everycreepingthing still a blog? Gee whizz, you could have fooled me, I guess it is!

Although historically experiencing a degree of hibernation each winter, recent inactive seasons may have led to some uncertainty about whether Instagram has fully replaced this outlet. Well, rest assured we are awakening from our slumber, earlier than ever before, and we are ready to learn!

Yesterday was almost 70 degrees here in Maryland. It is kind of nuts, and no guarantee that we won’t yet have a blizzard, but I am so relieved. I had forgotten how wonderful it smells to sleep with the window open, and feel sunshine on my skin.

I am also happy to report that despite growing knowledge about our natural world, this time of year is still filled with eternal rites of passage that I somehow have never even noticed happening before my eyes. Continue reading →

The shortest time of the year is also the beginning of the days getting longer, and for now it isn’t even so unbearably cold out.
Comparison with summer is unfair, but once summer is far enough away it is also impossible. Continue reading →

The Woolly Bear Caterpillar, the larval stage of the Isabella Tiger Moth, can be spotted all over the place on the East Coast this time of year. Like most insects except the Monarch, they will spend the winter here in a hibernation-like state called diapause. Many species of butterfly and moth actually spend the winter tucked into their chrysalis. The Woolly Bear is spotted out a bit later in the season perhaps in part because it actually spends the winter in caterpillar form, with a special anti-freeze inside of it that will keep it from forming ice crystals inside its body. Continue reading →

Do you know that I started this blog in 2013? Yeep, things were different then. One of the different things, and the blog’s original main topic, was a baby avocado plant.

Brewed with love, well travelled, and creatively fed, this young blog’s mascot represented bringing nature home. It journeyed to the Eastern Shore and back again while I was teaching outdoor education. Oh those simpler days. I still do not miss the long nights in tents and no time to change out of wet boots, but gosh, that fresh air, those flushed faces. The mud and the youth and Sassafras trees the rainy night board games and the salamanders.

Have things changed? Well, just ask this baby, who lived, in those wilder days, in a plastic cup.